Panelists:
Lauren Freedman, President, the e-tailing group
Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts
Amy Africa, President, Eight by Eight

The value of email marketing in New Zealand has been growing steadily over the years. Not surprisingly email marketing and online communications are the most popular media of choice now, particularly email marketing.

Email is a powerful marketing tool and it integrates well with traditional media. It spurs immediate action, thus generating direct sales, registrations, growth of database and more. It is also more cost effective than paper-based direct mail and achieves greater ROI. However, it is wrought with challenges. And with the passing of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act, it’s important for organisations to ensure compliance whilst developing their marketing plans.

Integrated Email Marketing and Online Communications takes a practical approach to ensure continued acquisition, growth and retention of customers through targeted, robust, tried and tested strategies to help lift your email marketing strategies. To help you gain the upper hand over your competition, the course also covers some popular online communications tools that you could implement to supplement your email marketing strategy.

DAY ONE
Digital Communications — Email Marketing, Online and Offline Media
Customers today have more choice available than ever before of how they are communicated with. Customers ultimately want to control the frequency, the content and how they receive their communications. This session covers how email fits within the full marketing mix and how it integrates with other online and offline media.

• What are digital communications?
• How do digital communications fit within the full marketing mix?
• Marketing through email, RSS, blogging, txt, websites
• Platforms – desktop computers, mobile devices
• Integration with other online media
• Integration with offline direct marketing

Developing an Email Strategy
Many companies spend a lot of time, effort and budget acquiring email addresses, but neglect to develop an effective communication strategy once they have them. You’ll learn to develop strategic communication plans to maximise the potential for robust marketing strategies through this session.

• Developing the digital communication strategic plan
• Objectives, strategies and tactical elements
• Understanding the email marketing and digital communications
  process
• How to integrate email marketing into other online and offline media

The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act: Your Legal Obligations
Understand and ensure that your organisation meets the requirements of the Electronic Messages Act 2007.

• Definition of spam
• Definition of permission levels
• Permission vs. memorable permission
• Industry guidelines and best practices
• How will the Act affect your marketing plans?
• What are the penalties and costs associated with breaches?
• How tight is the current legislation – what are the ways around it?
• How to ensure compliance
• International spam laws – do they apply to companies in NZ?

Data Management: Building and Maintaining a List
Data is at the heart of any form of direct marketing including “email”. It pays to identify the data that you need to collect in order to personalise communications and provide effective reporting.

• Structuring your database – what type of data do you need?
• What are the reporting data requirements?
• “Quantity” vs. “Quality” – retaining the active subscriber
• Cleaning and maintaining data – changes, adds, deletes, fixing misspellings
• What is “provable permission” – recording and time stamping of permission received
• “Offline permission” – how to record permission granted through the call centre, trade shows, network meeting and face-to-face sales activity
• Managing permission across an organisation

In-House or Outsource – Assessing Email Service Providers
Finding the right email service provider is a critical choice for any company. You will explore and learn ways to find the right vendor and technology to manage your campaigns now and into the future through this session.

• How to assess your needs
• Questions you should be asking
• Assessing email service providers in NZ and overseas
• Liaising with your email service provider

DAY TWO
Winning Creative Strategies & Execution for Email
Create email messages that stand out, get read and get the response you plan for.

• “Memorable permission” – planning content your subscribers actually want to read
• Exploring the 19 creative elements (the from line – email brand value, the subject line, the preview pane, position of logo, ratio of text to images, design layout, number and type of links, navigation bar, inclusion of photography, feature offers, location of call-to-action, the words you use and personalisation etc.)
• Email mandatories
• What are the technical specifications?
• Designing effective landing pages and forms
• Use of rich media – video and audio
• Eyetracking and multivariate testing

Increasing Conversion Rates
This session covers how to use data to improve conversions such as open rates, click rates, inquiries and sales.

• Reporting data
• Behavioural targeting
• Event triggered campaigns

Deliverability, Filters and Rendering
Learn techniques to avoid the dreaded “spam” folder and “report spam” button.

• Data collection and tracking
• Filters and list management
• Deliverability reporting codes – messages sent back from ISPs
• About false positives
• Whitelisting – how to get your message delivered every single time
• Image suppression – what’s getting delivered?
• Authentication and reputation
• Rendering your message in email readers

RSS – Spam Free Communications
Is RSS the holy grail of online communications? Lean how to send communications that are completely spam free.

• What is RSS and why use it?
• What are some of the popular RSS readers available?
• iRSS – individualized RSS, sending personalised communications just like email
• Content distribution and syndication

Blogging – Participating in the Ongoing Conversation

• The New Zealand and international blogospheres
• Starting a blog - how to choose a theme
• Posting content – what, how, when
• Dealing with comments
• Making friends – increase your presence in the blogosphere
• Integrating your blog with email and RSS
• Use of video (vlogging) and audio (podcasting)
• Reporting on performance

Traffic down? Conversions starting to wane? It could be any number of SEO issues. Finding free online tools to hone search optimization for an ecommerce site can be tough. There are a lot of them out there, often promotional in nature, and they offer varying degrees of features and reliability. Some spit out data that is simply erroneous and applying this sort of information to website design can be useless at best and deadly, in Internet terms, of course, at worst.

In this article originally published on Practical eCommerce Jeff Muendel, Search Analyst for Netconcepts, writes about Aaron Wall’s Website Health Check tool, a beneficial “free” SEO tool that offers easy-to-read, uncomplicated reports on a number of issues that includes missing title tags and meta descriptions to checking for duplicate content and verifying your error pages are returning the correct code.

Jeff also recommends some of Stephan Spencer’s previous articles for more SEO tool information and suggestions “on developing an SEO toolkit, Google Webmaster Tools, and SEO: Tools For Link Building.”

As an email marketer you are responsible to ensure that any ‘electronic messages’ sent are not considered spam. According to the act, failure to comply could mean a fine of up to $500,000 plus additional compensation and damages costs!

So, what is considered to be an electronic message?

Any commercial message either sent in single or bulk, promoting goods, services, land and commercial website links in the following media types:

• Emails
• Instant Messaging
• SMS
• Multimedia Message Services
• Other Mobile Phone Messaging

Even if your company website link is present in an email signature of a personal message it would be deemed as a commercial message.

3 Steps To Comply

Step 1: Consent

You are only able to send messages when you have obtained at least one of three following consent types:

• Expressed Consent: a direct indication from a person stating that it is okay for you to send messages through filling in a paper form, ticking a box on a website form or phone or face-to-face conversation. It is advised that a record of such consent received is recorded in all instances. This is called “provable permission”.
• Inferred Consent: is limited in its application. It is when a person has not directly instructed you to send them a message, but there is a clear expectation that you will. E.g. a subscriber has provided their electronic address when purchasing goods and services and expects ‘highly relevant’ follow-up communication.
  This does not mean however consent is inferred if a person has been on an existing address list and has not physically unsubscribed themselves. If you are unsure of the type of consent received, it is recommended to undertake a “re-permissioning” campaign.
• Deemed Consent: is when a person makes their work-related electronic address public such as on a website, brochure or magazine. You can only send messages if there is a strong relationship between the message and the recipient’s business. However, consent is not deemed if the publication states that the person does not wish to receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages at that address.

Step 2: Identify

Your business must be clearly identified within the message. Both the name and contact details must be provided so that recipients know how to contact you.

Step 3: Unsubscribe

A clearly presented and easy to use functioning unsubscribe facility must be made available from all commercial messages. As part of a “provable permission” practice, it is recommended that unsubscribes are also recorded.

FAQs

What is considered spam?

A message is considered to be spam if it is electronic, commercial in nature and unsolicited (meaning you have not gained any form of consent from the recipient you send messages to).

What media is affected by the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007?

Media such as emails, instant messaging, SMS, multimedia message services and other mobile phone messaging are affected by this act. The act does not include however voice or fax.

What does a commercial message actually mean?

A commercial message is one that is marketing or promoting goods, services or land or directing people to a destination where a commercial transaction can take place. Even if you display a website link in a personal email, the message can still be classified as commercial.

Which messages are not deemed to be commercial?

• Responses to a request for a quote or estimate
• Messages that facilitate, complete or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient previously agreed to
• Warranty information, product recalls and safety and security information about goods or services uses or purchased by the recipient
• Factual information about a subscription, membership, account, loan or similar ongoing relationship
• Information directly related to employment or a related benefit plan in which the recipient is currently involved.
• Messages delivering goods and services, including product or upgrades that the recipient is entitled to receive under the terms of a previous transaction.

Am I able to insert promotional messages into transactional type messages?

If the main purpose of the message is transactional in nature, small relevant commercial messages can be displayed without requiring additional consent.

What do unsolicited messages mean?

These are messages that are sent without the expressed, inferred or deemed consent from individuals.

Do I need to ask for permission from all my subscribers again?

If you are unsure of the type of permission that you have received from your subscribers and the consent has not been recorded you will need to undertake a “re-permission campaign”, unless one of other forms of consent apply.

What are the penalties for not complying with the act?

There are a number of options available to enforce the legislation including formal warnings, infringement notices and court actions. If a business is to be found in breach of the act, it may have to pay a penalty of up to $500,000 plus and additional victim compensation and/or damages up to the value of the profit generated as a result of sending spam.

What are the 3 levels of consent?

Consent is categorized into 3 levels: Express, Inferred and Deemed.

What is Express Consent?

Express Consent is granted when a person directly indicates that you are able to send them commercial messages such as filling in a paper form, ticking a box on a website or a phone or face-to-face conversation.

Do I need to record consent received?

It is advised to record granted consent either electronically or in paper form. Under the act, it is up to the sender that consent has been received. It is quite easy for people to forget that they have granted permission, therefore it is necessary to record when, how and what people have given consent to receive.

What is provable permission?

Provable permission is where you have electronically recorded consent received. Details recorded can include:

• Date and time of permission granted
• Place of where permission was granted (a website form check box, trade show, call centre, etc)
• Type of information that permission was granted for

What is Inferred Consent?

Even though a person has not directly provided consent for you to send them messages, there is a reasonable expectation that messages will be sent. Inferred Consent is granted if you swap business cards with people or if you provided an email address when purchasing goods and services with an expectation that there will be follow-up communication.

Even if a person has been on your existing address list and has not unsubscribed, it does not mean that consent can be inferred.

As a business owner you need to be careful of what “reasonable expectation” means. If a person purchases a product from you and provides their email address, does not necessarily mean that you can send a message 2 years after the purchase date for example. Permission does eventually expire if after an amount of time, it is no longer reasonably expected that communication will be sent.

If I have received “inferred consent”, can I send any information that I want?

No, you are only able to send messages that are highly relevant to the relationship in which you have with the recipient.

What is Deemed Consent?

Deemed Consent is where a person makes their “work related” electronic address publicly available in a website, brochure or magazine for example. However, consent cannot be deemed if there is a statement within the publication requesting that the person does not want to receive unsolicited electronic messages at that address.

Deemed Consent can only be granted if the message you intend to send is highly relevant to the recipient’s business.

Do only messages sent in bulk apply to the act?

No, both bulk and single commercial messages are covered by the act.

Do we need to identify who is sending the message?

Yes, you must always identify your business as the organisation responsible for sending commercial messages along with details of how you can be contacted.

We use GravityMail or another 3rd party system to send our commercial messages, so who is legally responsible for sending these messages?

Even when you use a third party system such as Netconcept’s GravityMail, your business is the legal sender of your commercial messages. Netconcepts must work with you to ensure that your business name and contact details are displayed within the message. Your contact details must be accurate for at least 30 days after the send date.

How do we fit all of our information onto a text message?

Even text messages need to include your business name and a way for people to contact you whether this is a phone number, email address, website address, etc.

What methods of “unsubscription” are allowed for within the act?

Recipients of commercial messages must be able to unsubscribe from your mailing list when they choose to at no cost to them. Both automated and manual unsubscribe functions are allowed for within the act, but they must be reliable. These include:

• An automated unsubscribe link – a one-step-click link that can be clicked upon that automatically unsubscribes the recipient from receiving further communications. No further action is required.
• An automated unsubscribe reply – a person can reply to the message with the word “UNSUBSCRIBE” written in the subject line. Your system automatically unsubscribes that user.
• A manual unsubscribe reply – a person can reply to the message with the word “UNSUBSCRIBE” written in the subject line or within the body of the message stating they wish to be unsubscribed. You must honour this request within 5 working days or subsequent messages will be regarded as unsolicited.

Can I hide the unsubscribe function at the bottom of my commercial message?

No, the unsubscribe function must be clearly presented and easy to use within the commercial message.

What other laws are connected with sending commercial electronic messages?

In addition to the “Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007”, you must also comply with the Privacy Act 1993 which covers 12 Privacy Principals. Passing on personal electronic addresses to another organisation or business, without permission, may breach the Privacy Act.

The Privacy Act also states that you must allow individuals on your database to be able to review and modify their information upon request without any cost to them.

What are the 12 Privacy Principals?

1. You can only collect personal information that is relevant to your business.
2. Personal information can only be collected directly from the individual except when the information is publicly available or you are authorised by the individual to collect it.
3. You must make the individual aware of the following:
   • That information is being collected
   • The purpose in which the information is being collected
   • Who is going to receive the information
   • Name and Address of the organization collecting and holding the information
   • The individual’s right to access and correct any information
4. Information shall not be collected by unlawful or unfair means and shall not intrude to an unreasonable extent upon the personal affairs of the individual.
5. Information must be protected against loss, unauthorised access, misuse and modification. Every organisation who holds personal information must appoint a Privacy Officer who will be responsible for compliance.
6. Individuals are entitled to obtain from organizations confirmation of whether or not personal information is held and to access the information about themselves. You should establish, document and implement procedures to handle enquiries from individuals and to provide information requested.
7. Individuals have the right to request correction of their personal information.
8. The agency holding personal information must not use that information without taking steps to ensure it is accurate, up-to-date, complete, relevant and not misleading.
9. Personal information shall not be kept for longer than required for its lawful use.
10. Personal information shall not be used for any purpose to that for which it was obtained unless the source of the information is a publicly available publication or the use of the information for another purpose was authorised by the individual concerned.
11. Personal information shall not be disclosed unless the disclosure is directly related to the reason for which the information was originally collected, or the source of the information is a publicly available document, or the disclosure is authorised by the individual concerned.
12. You should not assign a unique identifier to an individual unless it is necessary to carry out the lawful functions of your business.

More information about the privacy act can be found at www.privacy.org.nz/privacy-act

Checklist

• I have received either expressed, inferred or deemed consent from my subscriber database
• I have included accurate information about our company (the sender) within the message
• I have included clear details of how recipients can contact our company
• I have included a functional way for people to unsubscribe from our communications (e.g. an unsubscribe link)
• I have included the reason why the recipient is receiving the message. (a reminder that they have provided consent)
• I have included a method for recipients to be able to access and modify their personal information.
• I am recording all instances of permission granted by subscribers, unsubscriptions and history of messages sent to individuals.
• I have an electronic process in place to confirm verbally granted consent
• I do not use electronic address harvesting software to create mailing lists
• I do not purchase or use mailing lists that have been generated from harvesting software

For more information on complying with the ‘Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007’ go to:

www.antispam.govt.nz
www.antispam.govt.nz/Pubforms.nsf/URL/BusinessGuide.pdf/$file/BusinessGuide.pdf
www.marketing.org.nz/cms/Important_Notice/3727

Jacqui Jones is the Lead Consultant and Search and Online Marketing Specialist of search engine optimization agency Netconcepts and e-mail service provider GravityMail.

Problem

PoolDawg, an online billiards store, was in need of taking their internet marketing presence to the next level. They determined that SEO was the means to get them there.

“As a newer company in an established market, it was extremely important to get a jump start on our search engine listings,” says Mike Feiman, Director of Marketing for PoolDawg.com.

Their original website suffered from several structural/functional limitations and relatively low conversion rates.

Solution

An initial SEO analysis document was completed and presented for PoolDawg. The analysis covered the primary aspects for best practices in search engine optimization and provided PoolDawg a blue print for optimal execution into the organic search channel.

The analysis also provided insights that a new site structure, with optimized design and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), would benefit PoolDawg.com’s exposure in the search engines.

In order to capitalize on the SEO, structural and functional opportunities, PoolDawg decided to utilize Netconcepts’ GravityMarket Search Optimized Ecommerce Solution. GravityMarket provided PoolDawg.com an optimal site design and on a robust, scalable, software infrastructure.

“After delivering our analysis to PoolDawg, Netconcepts realized that a new site structure would do good things for their business online. We are pleased to see that our recommendation to get a new infrastructure was correct and PoolDawg is realizing the return,” stated Jody Hartwig, Netconcepts’ Vice President of Ecommerce.

New ecommerce features for PoolDawg include:

• Best practices in design and navigation, including optimal CSS files
• A stream lined, 3 step checkout process
• Estimated shipping calculated in shopping cart page
• Featured Products RSS Feed
• Enhanced Content Management System

Results

Implementation of the recommendations from the SEO Analysis yielded a 300% increase in search engine traffic.

Now that the redesign has taken effect, PoolDawg currently receives page one rankings for the targeted search term, “pool cues.”

Attention to best practices in website design, and merchandising, has paid dividends as well. Since the redesign, PoolDawg has enjoyed a conversion rate increase of 27%.

The new site design, and capabilities work to maximize the consumers’ entire shopping experience and drive them through to complete an order.

Feiman commented, “We saw an overall increase of over 300% in our search engine traffic within the first 60 days of implementation. We are extremely pleased with our initial results and look forward to expanding our relationship with Netconcepts.”

(Be sure to check out PoolDawg’s Podcast with PRWeb and Netconcepts’ VP of Client Services, Jody Hartwig)

(Also be sure to check out PoolDawg’s testimonial for Netconcepts)

Problem:

TRUSTcite is a self-funded start-up that came to Netconcepts without having an online presence at all. They needed more than just a web developer. They needed guidance with their online strategy and with how they could differentiate themselves in the market. Their processes weren’t defined. Their functionality wasn’t defined. Their key differentiators weren’t all defined. And how they would market themselves online wasn’t defined either. They were looking or a partner to rise to the occasion: not just spend their money by building them a website, but to really think through what would make their business successful.

Netconcepts were mindful that the funding for the website was coming out of the founder’s savings, so we stretched every dollar.

It couldn’t just be a good website that worked. It had to be an exceptional website. We believe that by incorporating some of the latest Web 2.0 technologies into the site in such a way that was a showcase for Web 2.0 ‘done right’, we could gain additional visibility for them.

Solution:

The solution that Netconcepts came up with was a sophisticated yet intuitive Web 2.0 application and website leveraging the power of XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, PHP and MySQL. Some of the core concepts of this Web 2.0 website included leveraging the social networking aspects of the site, making it easy to build a network of referral sources and recommenders and make it easy for visitors to find and compare service providers based on referrals and recommendations from business people and past clients. Ranked search results are based on peer reviews and user feedback. Another founding principal of the site is the KISS principle: keep unimportant information/content hidden but still accessible. Search is the most important feature so it was important to keep that prominent and simple with smart top navigation separation and simple home page search.

Users have almost full control of what they can put in their profile: images, bold titles, lists, contact details and so on, ranging from simple and well structured with image, or simple with no images.

Web standards are mandatory, making the web better for everyone. Accessibility is not just for the blind. Web standards and best practice make for easily indexed pages. Semantic markup is a search engine’s favorite thing!

Starting with a basic working version of the site that works without JavaScript, we built on to that base from there, employing JavaScript to add to the user experience. For example, “progressive enhancement” was used to allow the site to display on less visually rich platforms such as cell phones and PDAs. On the home page, JavaScript was used to — in a search engine friendly way — make the full category list initially hidden but available with one click without reloading the page.

Results:

It is still early days, but several thousand pages of the site have been indexed in Google, and good media coverage has been obtained for the site in the New Zealand Herald. With no advertising to the general public and limited advertising within the B2B media, visitor numbers have grown four-fold, comparing May to October. What is more important, a growing number of visitors are returning to the site and are directing their clients to the site also.

Hannah Samuel, founder of TRUSTcite says:

“I approached Netconcepts regarding the development of TRUSTcite as I knew they were experts in the field of search engine optimisation (SEO) and had extensive experience in website development. However, what was more important to me initially was their e-commerce consultancy service which proved to be vital to the success of developing and launching TRUSTcite. Much like a pattern-maker, Netconcepts took my sometimes abstract, 2-dimensional ideas, and developed the patterns out of which the ‘fabric’ of TRUSTcite was created. It was amazing to see the concept become reality following ongoing discussion and recommendation.

As a new venture, it was vitally important that clear outcomes and costs were identified and monitored. This is something I found Netconcepts to be excellent at and I can’t recommend highly enough how well managed the whole project was. I certainly look forward to a continuing relationship with Netconcepts as they are truly excellent designers, developers, project managers, e-commerce advisors and all round neat people!”

Problem:

Netconcepts.com is a typical corporate website, with a portfolio, testimonials, case studies, an article library, bios of the company’s executives, services, etc. As an industry innovator, it is important that we at Netconcepts practice what we preach. We knew our website was performing well, but we also knew we could do better. We wanted people to be able to see Web 2.0 principles applied to a corporate website, and to see the commensurate increase in traffic and improving search engine visibility because of it.

Solution:

In August 2006, just in time for the Search Engine Strategies conference, we rolled out a site revamp which included table-less CSS-based layout, the popular blogging platform WordPress as our new CMS (content management system), RSS feeds, and tagging (e.g. tag cloud and tag pages). Tagging, in particular, was this corporate site’s secret weapon.

First, every testimonial, every portfolio entry, every press mention, as well as each bio, article and case study, was broken out into a separate post. Then, each post was tagged with appropriate keywords. For example, all the testimonials are tagged with the word “Testimonials”. So instead of having a single testimonials page as we used to, we have a testimonials tag page that spans three web pages (at 10 posts per page) and each of the 30 testimonials is a separate web page now too. In other words, we went from 1 page to 33 pages; that’s a lot more search engine fodder, all with different keyword foci!

Spiders can find and index these tag pages through the text links contained within the tag cloud on the home page, through text links underneath each post, and through links to “Related Tags” on each tag page. Related Tags are determined from posts that have the tag (from the tag page in question) in common. So, for example, because we have posts that are tagged with both “SEO” and “Testimonials”, “SEO” then appears as a related tag on the Testimonials tag page and “Testimonials” appears as a related tag on the SEO tag page. We display links not just to the related tag pages, but to conjunctions between related tags. So, for example, you will find on our Testimonials tag page a number of Related Tags in the right hand column, all with “AND” and “OR” links adjacent to each one.

Let’s restate that a little bit differently just to clarify… All our SEO-related items (testimonials, case studies etc.) are tagged with “SEO”. Consequently, there is a tag page that relates to “SEO” and a tag page that relates to “testimonials”. There’s even a tag page that relates to “SEO testimonials” — the intersection of those two tags. That makes for ‘boatloads’ of tag pages, considering how many different permutations there are for various combinations of tags being “ANDed” or “ORed” together.

By moving to a more modular structure (based around Posts rather than Pages) along with the large inventory of new pages, that allowed us to capitalize on the “Long Tail” of natural search in ways we couldn’t dream of with our previous incarnation of brochureware.

Above the “Related Tags” you will see a RSS button which leads to a RSS feed specific to that tag page. We use that RSS feed to pull the latest articles, testimonials, seminars etc. and feature them as related content on the right column of our Services pages. For example, our Email Marketing page lists Related Articles on email marketing, because we’ve specified that the topic of the page is “email marketing” (in other words, the tag that it relates to). We use that information to grab RSS feeds of tag pages for email marketing + articles, email marketing + testimonials, etc.

Besides tagging, we have also employed many other blog SEO tactics, a number of which I detailed in my article for MarketingProfs, 10 Tips to Help Your Blog Soar in the Search Engines. This includes use of sticky posts, adding buttons to add a post to del.icio.us and various other social bookmarking services, and linking to a “Top 10″ list of sorts — namely, under “Free Stuff” on the home page, some of our best content from the past year or so.

To our knowledge, this approach for search engine optimizing a corporate site has not been done before, particularly the aspect of breaking up all the discrete bits of content (each testimonial, each portfolio item, each FAQ, etc.) into individual posts and tagging all them, and then relating that tagged content with the appropriate Services pages and highlighting those as related content.

And, last but not least, the new redesigned site, although it doesn’t look markedly different from the old site, is better designed with XHTML and web standards in mind. No more tables for layout! That was long overdue.

Results:

It is amazing what can be achieved in regards to SEO just by reaching into the Web 2.0 toolkit. A corporate brochure is about as Web 1.0 as one can get, yet even brochureware can be transformed in ways one may never have thought possible and boosting search visibility in the process. In the space of just a few months after relaunch, the site went from about 100,000 pageviews per month to 390,000 by the end of October 2006. We saw a marked increase in visitor numbers as well: from about 28,000 to about 60,000 in that same timeframe.

Note in both of the above graphs the traffic trend was quite flat throughout the summer before it ramped upward starting in mid-August after the revamp launched.

Thanks to the site’s new content structure, indexation in Google increased from 300 pages to 4,800 pages, including 2,640 tag pages. Stephan Spencer, founder and president of Netconcepts, explains:

“I equate indexed web pages with a ‘virtual sales force’ that works hard to bring in traffic from the search engines for us. By adding thousands more web pages to Google’s index, we significantly expanded our ‘virtual sales force’, and because of it, our opportunities to rank well for relevant Long Tail search terms have multiplied.”

With the revamped site now powered by WordPress, a popular blogging platform, it qualifies as a blog. As such, our corporate site now enjoys visibility in the blog search engines and directories. And, because WordPress comes with RSS feed capability built in, visibility in the feed search engines and directories came too. Netconcepts.com doesn’t offer just one RSS feed, but many — grouped by topic (e.g. SEO, email marketing) and by type of resource (e.g. articles, testimonials) — all accomplished through the use of tagging.

Stephan continues:

“Since switching over to WordPress, we were also pleased to find visitors started participating on our site through comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks. Check out our SEO Title Tag Plugin page for a great example of this in action. The conversation there is still ongoing. This, happily, encourages more backlinks to our site!”

[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]

Visit the site: LePoidevin Rickinger Group

In the last decade, technology has fundamentally changed the way companies and customers communicate and interact with one another. Consumers have 24/7 access to almost limitless information and can easily investigate a global network of options. And companies can readily tap into an amazing breadth and depth of information about their customers and prospects.

But as many companies are learning, new information and resources don’t necessarily lead to more productive relationships or effective marketing solutions.

Overwhelmed by the variety of interactive marketing tools and data? We can help. With the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Interactive Marketing program.

During this intensive three-day seminar, our industry experts will teach you how to create an effective blend of online and offline marketing to reach your customers and increase sales and productivity.

Interactive Marketing will teach you to:

Optimize your online efforts
After more than a decade of online marketing, companies are still struggling to find the best ways to use the web to promote themselves and build relationships with their customers. Our proven, practical tips will help you to get higher search engine rankings, make your e-mails filter-friendly — yet compliant! — and deliver relevant customer-focused website content.

Integrate online and offline media for maximum ROI
Combine the science of direct marketing with the technology of new media and you’ll link the efficiencies of mass promotion with the immediacy of one-to-one. Learn why the seamless integration of sales, marketing and distribution functions is crucial, and how to strategically coordinate your on- and offline efforts.

Identify how an interactive media campaign can strenghten — or threaten — your brand
Infinite opportunities to reach your customers and prospects means an equally infinite number of opportunities to dilute or damage your brand. Learn how to create an appropriate balance between branding and demand creating to protect your long-term brand equity while driving curent sales.

Who should attend?

This course provides excellent insights for directors, managers and executives involved in:

• Digital and Interactive Marketing
• Marketing, Sales and Advertising
• Communications
• Business Development
• New Media Planning
• Product and Brand Management
• Strategic Planning
• Customer Acquisition/Retention
• IT and website development

Here are the top 5 reasons you should attend this course:

5. There is no sales pitch for any product or service.
4. You will be provided with cross-functional perspectives on interactive marketing.
3. You will learn there is life after SPAM and CAN-SPAM.
2. Your customers will be happy with the web improvements you make.
1. The increased effectiveness of your integrated marketing campaign will make you a hero.

According to studies, fully one-third of permission-based e-mails are not even delivered. If you’re lucky enough to reach the recipient’s inbox, you still have to worry about getting your e-mail opened and read.

For most recipients it is a split-second decision whether or not to delete your e-mail — a decision based almost entirely on the From line and the Subject line. And if that doesn’t sound harrowing enough, there are plenty of other hazards in the design and layout of the e-mail.

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

So many designers of e-mail campaigns make the fatal mistake of designing the e-mail to be viewed in its entirety. E-mail doesn’t work like that. E-mail is scrolled through and in very small windows.

If you design the e-mail to look like a Web page and allocate valuable screen real estate at the top of your e-mail to masthead graphics and branding messages, you relegate the key messages to reside “below the fold” of the preview pane.

If your recipient doesn’t get your key message from what displays immediately in the preview pane, they probably won’t invest the effort in reading your e-mail or taking your desired action.

Cut to the chase. The first paragraph should be very easy to scan and should be a good overview of the key messages that you are trying to impart. The From line and the Subject line is where your branding goes — the From line in particular — rather than in gratuitous graphics.

Decide what is the one point that you want to get across and make that point in your Subject line. A Subject line of “September edition of ABC Company’s e-mail newsletter” is not compelling, as it offers no value proposition or clue as to the e-mail’s contents.

Scrolling through five screens within the preview pane is too much to ask of your recipient. If you have a lot of copy, move most of it to one or more landing pages. If your e-mail is full of images, move those to landing pages as well. People are not nearly as tolerant of slow download times in their e-mail clients as they are in their Web browsers.

PICTURE PERFECT?

Making life even more difficult for e-mail marketers, some e-mail clients like Outlook 2003 and Web mail services like Gmail don’t display images by default.

Thus, any important content locked up within images won’t be readily accessible to many recipients, particularly if the image doesn’t include an “alt” attribute (alternate text that displays when image loading is turned off).

Likely, the image height and width attributes were not defined, because if they were, the image placeholder box would take up an unnecessarily large amount of screen real estate.

Then there are the campaigns that don’t look “designed” at all.

These are the e-mails that could have been created by the office assistant using Microsoft Word. If the e-mail has too many conflicting styles — too many different font faces and colors and a lack of consistency in their use — then it will look like spam.

If you don’t have the resources to design a properly formatted, professionally designed e-mail campaign, don’t try to muddle through it. Rather, refrain from any formatting more extensive than bolded headings and bullet points.

Even able designers shouldn’t try to get too sophisticated with CSS (cascading style sheets), because some e-mail clients won’t be able to display them properly.

CSS is fine for setting font faces and sizes, but trying to lay out the page with CSS would be a mistake. Use tables instead. I know that is a very ’90s thing to say, but for e-mail marketing that is what you need to do. Try to use as few tables as possible, and avoid the use of nested tables.

Every graphically rich e-mail needs to have a message at the very top stating something to the effect of “If you can’t read this message, click here” which will take the recipient to a Web page containing a properly formatted version of the e-mail.

There is no point having such a message five lines down into the HTML code, because your recipient isn’t going to scour the HTML code looking for the link.

TEXT CONTEXT

Including within your e-mail a plain text version (using “multi-part MIME”) isn’t just good for recipients running e-mail clients incapable of displaying HTML. It also makes your e-mail more palatable to the spam filters. That’s because many spammers don’t bother making multi-part e-mails.

Within the HTML “part,” aim for a high ratio of text copy to HTML coding. Spammers often rely on images to hide text that will get picked up by the spam filters — phrases like “free access,” “best rates,” “big savings,” “call now,” “full refund,” “guaranteed,” “incredible” and “opportunity” — resulting in a low text to HTML ratio. Crafting an e-mail that will get past the spam filters is not straightforward.

Thankfully, spam-scoring tools exist, such as the free tool at www.gravitymail.com/spamscore.php (excuse the plug, please). It will run your e-mail through SpamAssassin, one of the most popular spam filters among Internet service providers, and generate a report detailing the penalties that you racked up.

Never send a campaign out before scoring it first.

ADDRESS MATTERS

As previously stated above, your From line should, in most cases, include your company name or brand name. Only include a personal name in the From line if the recipient is going to recognize that name.

If, for example, you are a hotel sending out a campaign to previous guests and your e-mail is “From” your general manager, nobody is going to know who that is and your e-mail will be deleted.

Oh, and by the way, don’t forget to include your physical address at the bottom of the message for CAN-SPAM compliance.

E-mail is a very different medium from the Web, and it requires a different approach. If you don’t see to its exacting demands and the seeming minutiae, your campaign will fall short.

You can’t just hire a Web designer to design you an e-mail template and expect them to do a good job. Nor can you simply bang out an e-mail in WordPad and expect it to get past the spam filters.

Welcome to e-mail marketing’s second epoch.

Stephan Spencer is president of search engine optimization agency Netconcepts and e-mail service provider GravityMail, both Madison, WI. Reach him at .